He wants to be nice. He wants her to listen. Not just see him as an old idiot who means well.
I’m forty-five. I can be part of her life.
The front door is locked.
But she could still be here.
Through the glass in the door Bror Lundin can see that the house is dark. He takes out his key and goes inside.
Something’s not right. He feels it at once. The house smells aired, not shut-up and stale the way it usually does. He hurries into the living room.
The lake is pitch-black now, and the outside furniture, the barbeque and folded parasol on the terrace look like scorched bronze statues.
He sees what he doesn’t want to see.
The glass in the terrace door has been smashed.
His shoes crunch as he moves around the room. The furniture is in disarray, the two Bruno Mathsson armchairs overturned, and the mat under the dining table is crumpled.
Broken vases.
The glass-fronted cabinet has been pushed over.
Glass everywhere.
Disorder.
Like after a fight. As if people had been fighting there.
Nadja’s laptop is on the table, open, its screen black. Her brown cardigan is tossed on one of the sofas.
Bror Lundin stops. Breathes. Feels a cold wind blow through the broken terrace door.
He can’t hear or feel his breathing.
Nadja.
NADJA!
He wants to call to her, loud and long. Drive her out of the forest with his cries.
Nadja.
You were here.
Someone came.
You fought.
You’re missing.
Bror Lundin has never felt more scared in all his life. He feels the jaws of potential tragedy open up, can feel the beast’s breath on his neck, knows it could swallow him whole.
He walks out onto the terrace. Looks out at the untouched vegetable garden.
Screams his daughter’s name.
Over and over again, he screams her name.
But no sound comes out.
22
Dad.
Dad.
Are you calling to me?
Or is that you calling, Mum? Am I that close to you?
I dreamed your cries. When I was sleeping.
It’s hot now, I’m sweating, I want to drink, but there’s no more water in the tube, it’s run out.
I try to throw my hands out sideways.
I strike as hard as I can, but it’s too cramped, and my knuckles won’t bleed.
I’m so alone that I can’t even make myself bleed.
My sores sting and burn.
Please, Dad, find me soon.
23
Julianna Raad leans forward and spits in Malin’s face.
‘Cop bitch.’
Malin wishes she could reach over and grab her by the throat.
Julianna is twenty-two years old, and the most hate-filled person Malin has ever met. As if she were possessed by a demon.
She looks almost cute in her flowery dress and gentle features, but her eyes reveal a will of steel.
Elin Sand puts her hand on Malin’s arm.
‘Easy now, easy.’
Interview room number two is painted in various shades of brown. The chairs and table are metal, and the light from the halogen lamps in the ceiling reveal every detail of people’s eyes and faces.
Göran Möller is watching behind the mirror.
‘You won’t provoke me,’ Malin says, wiping the saliva from her face with the sleeve of her jacket.
‘We’ll see.’
‘Why did you fire at us?’ Elin Sand asks, in a friendly voice.
‘I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Malin says. ‘But you’re welcome to do so, if you like.’
You’re looking at a lengthy prison sentence now, she thinks. The prosecutor will get attempted murder out of this, at the very least.
‘You’re in the shit.’
They’ve explained to her why they went out to the farm, and why she’s now sitting in this interview room.
‘Did you send Peder Åkerlund those threatening letters?’
Julianna Raad appears to consider the situation, then a light goes on in her dark eyes.
‘It was me,’ she says, and smiles. ‘I wanted to scare the racist bastard. The way he scares other people.’
‘He’d renounced racism,’ Elin Sand says.
‘How can you be so sure about that?’
‘What do you mean?’
The pictures in his flat, Elin thinks. Adolf Hitler’s artless landscapes. Why hadn’t he taken them down?
‘There are anonymous websites with posts from him. Updated long after he’s supposed to have become a saint.’
‘Which websites?’ Malin asks.
Julianna Raad gives them some web addresses.
‘So you believe he was still racist?’
‘You can never be sure. But once a racist, always a racist.’
‘When did you send the letters?’ Elin asks.
‘The first one last autumn, the last one two months ago.’
‘But why in Arabic?’
‘I knew that’s what would scare him most.’
‘How do you mean?’ Malin asks.
‘He wouldn’t feel scared of me, a girl. But Muslims … they make people like him shit their pants.’
‘And then you made good on the threats. Got hold of him somehow and killed him.’
Julianna Raad leans back in her chair. Throws her head back and bursts out laughing.
‘I know you’ve got a forensics team searching my house now. Seizing my computers. But you won’t find anything, because there’s nothing to find. It wasn’t me, someone else did it.’
‘You threatened to kill him,’ Malin says. ‘You must appreciate that means we have to consider you a suspect.’
‘I was just imitating the rhetoric of the jihadists. You know, the way they talk on YouTube before cutting off a hostage’s head.’
Malin takes a deep breath.
‘Do you sympathise with their views?’
Julianna smiles but doesn’t reply.
‘Why did you open fire on us?’ Elin Sand asks again. ‘You were trying to kill us, weren’t you?’
Julianna Raad laughs once more.
‘If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d have hit you.’
‘So why did you shoot?’
‘Like I said, I don’t have to explain anything to you.’
A police-hater, Malin thinks. An anarchist. At least a century too late.
‘Have you got a licence for your rifle?’ Elin asks.
‘Ha!’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘You think I’d tell you?’
She’s capable of anything, could have done anything, Malin thinks.
‘Why do you live on your own out at the farm?’
‘I rent it.’
‘How can you afford that?’
Julianna Raad doesn’t answer.
‘A good hideout,’ Elin says.
‘A good place to live.’
‘Why did you open fire?’
‘I heard about the murder on the radio. I thought you were his girlfriends or something. Sent by the racists to take revenge. Maybe they’d figured out that I’d threatened him and thought I killed him. I panicked, OK?’
‘That doesn’t sound very believable,’ Malin says. ‘How could anyone have known the letters came from you?’
Julianna raises her eyebrows.
‘Let’s try this, then,’ she says. ‘I realised you were cops, and got scared. I knew you’d grab any opportunity you had to hurt me because I hurt one of your colleagues. That’s what you’re like. An eye for an eye. Better to shoot first.’
‘So you didn’t kill the racist bastard,’ Elin says. ‘But you’re pleased he’s dead?’
Julianna Raad nods.
‘People who think like him shouldn
’t exist. Get rid of them, I say.’
‘But he’d changed his views. He was working for the same cause as you.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference.’
‘So what do you want?’ Elin Sand asks. ‘Broadly speaking?’
‘I want change.’
‘What sort of change?’
‘Of the whole fucking global order. If I end up like everyone else, I might as well be dead.’
She’s not mincing her words, Malin thinks. Maybe the saliva from that mouth is slowly eating away at my cheek? You knew we were police officers, saw your chance to change ‘the global order’.
‘Do you have access to chemicals?’ she asks.
‘No, why would I?’
‘What were you doing the night before last?’
‘I was in the city. With a friend. I spent the night at hers. You can check. Stina Persdotter.’
‘What did you do?’ Elin asks.
‘We watched a film. The Hobbit. It was shit.’
‘I haven’t seen it,’ Malin says.
‘You need to understand something,’ Julianna Raad whispers, leaning across the table. ‘There’s a war going on. And if their voices aren’t silenced, they’ll silence ours. And their voices would destroy the world.’
Mad, Malin thinks.
But on the other hand … If no one protests against racism and injustice, and is prepared to go out on a limb with their protests, what would happen then? Would the worst of the maniacs take over?
‘I’m prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.’
Julianna Raad leans closer to the tape recorder. Puts her lips to the microphone.
‘I want this on record: you shot first. I was just defending myself against the fascist state.’
They let the uniforms take Julianna Raad to a cell in the custody unit. A long walk through the underground tunnels, Malin thinks.
Göran Möller hadn’t wanted her and Elin to conduct the interview at first, thought they were far too agitated after being shot at. But Malin made her objections very clear.
‘I arrested her, I question her, OK?’
She wasn’t about to discuss the matter.
Göran Möller relented, and now the three detectives are standing in the passageway outside the interview room. They’re all tired, but this case can’t wait.
‘I’ll call her friend,’ Elin says.
‘Yes, we need to do that,’ Göran Möller says, then goes on: ‘Karin called a little while ago. They haven’t found anything interesting out there yet. No chemicals, no drugs, nothing much at all.’
‘Maybe she did only send the letters,’ Malin says. ‘Her explanations are more or less plausible. If you put them all together. I don’t think she was lying.’
Elin Sand shakes her shoulders into place. As if her neck were sore.
‘Me neither. But we can’t be certain.’
‘Nice work, girls,’ Göran Möller says.
Malin feels like exploding, and Göran evidently notes her anger. He smiles.
‘Just kidding. Nice work, bastard cops.’ He goes on: ‘I don’t know how you managed to keep your calm when she spat at you.’
Malin replies: ‘You underestimate me. I’ll ask Johan to take a look at those websites she mentioned.’
Then Göran Möller’s phone rings. He pulls it out from his trouser pocket, takes the call. Raises his eyebrows ten seconds later.
‘I’ll send Malin and Elin out at once.’
He ends the call. Looks at the two detectives.
‘We won’t be getting any sleep for a while.’
The clock on the wall in the interview room says 23.55.
The first day of the investigation into Peder Åkerlund’s murder has gone at breakneck speed, and now something else has happened.
‘You’re heading out to Svartmåla. A man thinks his daughter has been abducted.’
24
I’d like to talk about Dad.
He was a bigwig. A man who made the decisions in the place where we lived. The socialist apostle of goodness. Used to preach justice and equality. A citizen beyond reproach.
Then he would come home to us. To me and Mum. He would put the bottle to his lips and preach with his fists about the place of women and children on earth and in the home.
And he went on hitting and hitting.
Me and Mum. Mostly Mum.
He threw a saucepan of boiling water at her. At the hospital they believed him when he said she tripped on the way to the sink.
Mum said nothing.
Because if she had, he would have taken it out on me. He would have killed me.
In the name of goodness.
Soon I’ll talk about Mum. I’m just going to play for a while, even though it’s late.
25
Tuesday, 16 May
Night closes around the car like a flower. The headlamps light up the forest, and between the trunks of the pines Malin imagines she can see faces with rags stuffed in their open mouths.
Elin is firmly settled in the driver’s seat.
As if nothing could shake her.
But Malin knows better. Everyone can be shaken, by life and what it can do to a person.
What’s waiting for us out at the house?
A desperate father? A confused man who can’t accept that his daughter has grown up and made her way out into the world without saying anything?
Is the girl really missing?
Göran Möller seemed certain: a girl has actually gone missing. This isn’t a false alarm.
Svartmåla.
The psychologist, Viveca Crafoord, has a rather lovely summer house here. Has she still got it? Malin hasn’t had any contact with her for several years.
Malin closes her eyes.
Thinks about Tove. Congo is in the same time zone as Sweden, there’s no difference. She should have reached those mountain villages, perhaps she’s sleeping in a tent. Malin would like to phone, but knows it’s too late, and there’s probably something like a one in ten thousand chance that Tove is actually within range.
It must have gone OK. None of the jungle’s demons has got hold of her, no accident will have happened.
She has no idea what Tove is having to witness.
Doesn’t want to know.
Thinks: What I see here is enough.
She tries to put Tove out of her mind. Thinks about Daniel instead.
His deep voice, how much she likes listening to the sound it makes, how much she would miss it. The love, comfort, and calm it provides.
She feels the car turn a couple of times before coming to a halt on what feels like gravel. When she opens her eyes she sees a smart man in a pink tennis shirt walking towards them, eyes wide open.
The fear in his face.
It’s genuine. That’s beyond any doubt.
Elin switches the car’s headlights off, and the night turns dark.
They get out of the car and walk over to the man, who holds out his hand as he introduces himself.
‘Bror Lundin.’
Malin shakes his hand. Hears him say: ‘It didn’t occur to me to switch the lights on. Follow me.’
He leads them around the house, and when they reach the terrace he says quietly: ‘There’s glass here,’ and Elin asks him to turn some lights on. Bror Lundin clicks some switches on the wall of the house, and Malin finds herself looking at a neat garden sloping down towards Järnlunden. The lake spreads out into the night like a black lung.
Broken glass on the terrace, and in the living room.
A chaotic mess of furniture and papers.
There’s been a fight in here, Malin thinks, that much is obvious. Someone broke in, and a struggle ensued, and she glances at Elin. The look in her eyes says: This is serious.
Malin takes in the scene. The glass, the mess, looks for signs of a body being dragged off, a path through the chaos.
Bror Lundin stands in the middle of the room. Looks beseechingly at them.
‘What d
o you think?’ he says.
Nadja.
His daughter’s name is Nadja.
Malin remembers the name now. It vanished from her head the moment Göran Möller said it, but she remembers it now.
Sixteen years old.
‘Someone’s taken Nadja,’ Bror Lundin says.
Elin Sand goes over to him, puts her arm around his shoulders, and leads him off towards the kitchen, where she gently encourages him to sit down on one of the stools. Malin follows them, noting that Elin has a calming effect on the man who is Nadja’s father.
‘Yes,’ Malin says. ‘Nadja could have been abducted. But right now we don’t know any more than you do.’
Bror Lundin shakes his head.
‘I knew it would lead to trouble. I begged her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen to me.’
Stop what? Malin thinks.
Then she flinches and pulls back. The realisation hits her, and creeps coldly down the lower half of her spine: Did you set this all up, Bror? Have you done something to your own daughter?
She asks: ‘Is this how it looked when you arrived?’
‘Nadja wasn’t home when we got back from our holiday,’ Bror Lundin says. ‘We hadn’t managed to get hold of her for a few days, and when she wasn’t in the flat I came out here. She often comes out here to write and look after the garden. She does her yoga out here too, she likes doing it close to nature.’
‘The front door wasn’t open?’ Elin Sand asks.
‘No, but there was a mess in here, and the terrace door was smashed.’
‘Why did you think she’d get into trouble?’ Malin asks, and Bror Lundin seems to slump, even as his eyes reflect a sort of pride.
‘She was very involved in environmental and social campaigning. She has her own blog, she’s even written articles condemning the Sweden Democrats and Swedish immigration policy. She’s precocious, she knows more than me about social issues, and she had an article about refugee children travelling alone published in Dagens Nyheter. She won some sort of essay competition. The winner had their piece published in the paper, and they ran it on the op-ed pages. But she makes too much noise, she doesn’t understand the forces she’s challenging.’
Malin’s stomach clenches.
Peder Åkerlund.
Racist.
Earth Storm_The new novel from the Swedish crime-writing phenomenon_Malin Fors Page 9
